After 65 Years The BBC Russian Service Ceases Broadcasts

On Saturday, March 26 the BBC Russian Service aired its last broadcast at 21:30 Moscow time. The BBC Russian Service ceased its radio broadcasts after 65 years on the air because of drastic budget cuts implemented by the British government. The BBC also stopped broadcasting to Russia in English on short and medium wave. A limited audio service with three Russian-language programs will continue on the Internet at http://www.bbc.co.uk/russian/, but the Russian service will lose around half its staff.

Although due to the austerity measures implemented by the government, Alexander Bratersky of the Moscow Times writes, “the closure was not entirely unexpected after the Russian BBC left the FM broadcast band in 2007, switching to middle waves and losing a chunk of its audience in the process. BBC representatives cited technical issues at the time, but the shift coincided with a spat over the death of former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned in London by what British authorities suspected were Kremlin agents. The killing seriously soured Russian-British relations.”

Last October, the British government announced the BBC would take over the cost of the World Service from the Foreign Office. Of the current 2,400 personnel BBC is expected to lay off 433 people this year and 650 people more in the next two years to meet the target cut of 16% of the BBC World Service’s £267 million government grant over the next five years. The BBC says the cuts will mean that the World Service audience will fall by more than 30 million people a week – from 180 million to 150 million and result in a net savings of £46 million ($74 million).

The BBC Russian Service is not the only one being axed as part of a money saving strategy by the British government. Five language services (Albanian, Macedonian, Serbian, English for Caribbean and Portuguese for Africa) are scheduled for total closure in a bid to save money. While seven additional language radio programs have been significantly cut – Azeri, Mandarin for Chinese, Russian, Spanish for Cuba, Turkish, Vietnamese and Ukrainian.

The U.K. parliament website that details the implication of the BBC World Service Cuts states: “We are led to believe that the weekly reach of the BBC World Service for the Albanian service is 510,000, for the Macedonian service 160,000, for the Caribbean service 660,000 and the Portuguese service 1,498,000. The total weekly reach of the five language services proposed for closure therefore is 2,828,000. We also understand that the audience figures for the radio services in Azeri are 150,000, for Mandarin in Chinese 595,000, for Russian 1,241,000, for Spanish for Cuba 9,000, for Turkish 450,000, for Vietnamese 100,000 and for Ukrainian radio 910,000. This amounts to a total of 3,455,000 audience reach for the radio programmes scheduled for closure.” So it appears that a total number of over 6.2 million listeners will be cut off from the services.

The BBC started in 1946 and for the past 65 years since the beginning of the Cold War has reached millions of Soviet citizens despite the KGB’s efforts to jam it. Not surprisingly a Moscow Times editorial lamented the closure of the BBC Russian Service as the end of an era, “when Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was exiled to a Black Sea island during a short-lived coup in 1991, the BBC Russian Service broadcasts on his pocket radio was the only way he got news.” The Voice of Russia writes that “there was an anecdote that the role of Anatoly Goldberg, the leading radio host of the BBC Russian service, in the break-up of the USSR was as important as the role of Mikhail Gorbachev.” It adds, “This is an exaggeration, of course, but we should not underestimate the influence of BBC on the Soviet audience.”

I’m not very familiar with the BBC Russia Service programming, but I can’t help feeling saddened by this news. I’m a huge fan of the BBC radio and I have to admit I listen to it sometimes obsessively. I am always impressed by the BBC’s integrity and the quality of their programs so I can only imagine what a loss it is for the Russian listener (as well as to listeners in other countries especially those under repressive regimes). It is sad that a radio program that survived the Cold War and undoubtedly was instrumental in spreading the voice of freedom in the Soviet Union was brought down by budget cuts.

If you speak Russian you can watch a short video about the BBC Russia Service’s last program here, aired on March 26, 2011.

Listen to the BBC Russian Service’s critical role during the August 1991 coup on the BBC World Service.

News link: BBC Russian radio hits the off switch after 65 years.